I think I had a lucid dream, he said

I realized I was dreaming so I worked on how to fly

I fell out of that dream into another one

where I was here in bed, and you and Heather had come home.

I think I had a lucid dream, in that

a nightmarish beligerancy vanished

with hardly any memory, no caustic

bitterness deposited around my mouth

or eyes, no nagging tension at my neck

or eyebrows.  Just a liquid sweet connection

with a languid waker from deep sleep.

who said, yeah, I was just too tired

to think straight.  I’ll listen to you next time.

OK.  I didn’t buy the nightmare.  I held out

for a better dream.  And look! At least

right in this moment, here it is.

Father and son

work on math

socks abandoned on the floor

beneath the stools on which they sat

to pore through textbooks

try equations

series

permutations

probabilities.

The heat of mind exertion rises

rests on cheeks, enlivens eyes

The problems don’t turn off at night

impinge on sleep of father

(not of son, who crashes mightily

and fills with languor deep and thick)

Both hard to rouse come morning.

But next day, they resume

(what did you get for number four?)

and though the son will not admit it

a smile hovers

just behind his mouth.

They power through together.

A few years ago I was captivated by Stephen Fry’s Book The Ode Less Travelled, Unlocking the Poet Within.  His gently self-deprecating admission “I write poetry” gave me permission to explore something I’ve loved but not dared to take seriously.   At his wry suggestion, I dedicated a journal and started doing the exercises he presents, such as:  “Write five pairs of blank iambic pentameter. . . To make it easier I will give you a specific subject for all five pairs. 1. Precisely what you hear and see outside your window; 2. Precisely what you’d like to eat, right this minute. . . .”

I found I greatly enjoyed working with meter, rhyme, and meaning.  Later I came to love poetry with partial rhyme and subtle meter – where the images might take me first but then I would notice how the sounds rocked me.  So at the end of November, at a lightening of other duties, I took it upon myself to write a sonnet a day – not to be profound but just to hone my craft.  Today I share one in response to my friend Kathleen Noble’s post on loneliness:

How quickly all the flurry settles down

The waves recede, the foam evaporates

In sudden quiet, here I am alone

No partner, cohort, no collective state

It is a lie, of course, this isolation

My family’s here, although in different rooms

They care for me and hold me in relation

I haven’t really wandered off in gloom

And though I feel I’ve drawn the circle small

So few who know me, few who care I’m here

Another view would show me one with all

Would make my contribution strong and clear

It’s just an artifact of how I’m seeing

Succumbing to the void, or brightly being.